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ADDRESS 

OF THE 



PRESIDENT OF THE 
UNITED STATES 



DELIVERED AT A JOINT SESSION OF THE 
TWO HOUSES OF CONGRESS 



APRIL 19, 1916 




WASHINGTON 
1916 



3 

.Aa 




D. of D„ 
APR 21 1916 



N^ 



ADDRESS. 



Gentlemen of the Congress : 

A situation has arisen in the foreign relations of the country of 
which it is my plain duty to inform you very frankly. 

It will be recalled that in February, 1915, the Imperial German 
Government announced its intention to treat the waters surrounding 
Great Britain and Ireland as embraced within the seat of war and 
to destroy all merchant ships owned by its enemies that might be 
found within any part of that portion of the high seas, and that it 
warned all vessels, of neutral as well as of belligerent ownership, to 
keep out of the waters it had thus proscribed or else enter them at 
their peril. The Government of the United States earnestly pro- 
tested. It took the position that such a policy could not be pursued 
without the practical certainty of gross and palpable violations of 
the law of nations, particularly if submarine craft were to be em- 
ployed as its instruments, inasmuch as the rules prescribed by that 
law, rules founded upon principles of humanity- and established for 
the protection of the lives of non-combatants at sea, could not in the 
nature of the case be observed by such vessels. It based its protest 
on the ground that persons of neutral nationality and vessels of 
neutral ownership would be exposed to extreme and intolerable risks, 
and that no right to close any part of the high seas against their use 
or to expose them to such risks could lawfully be asserted by any 
belligerent government. The law of nations in these matters, upon 
which the Government of the United States based its protest, is not 
of recent origin or founded upon merely arbitrary principles set up 
by convention. It is based, on the contrary, upon manifest and 
imperative principles of humanity and has long been established 
with the approval and by the express assent of all civilized nations. 

Notwithstanding the earnest protest of our Government, the Im- 
perial German Government at once proceeded to carry out the policy 
it had announced. It expressed the hope that the dangers involved, 
at any rate the dangers to neutral vessels, would be reduced to a 
minimum by the instructions which it had issued to its submarine 
commanders, and assured the Government of the United States that 
it would take every possible precaution both to respect the rights of 
neutrals and to safeguard the lives of non-combatants. 

37887—16 3 



What has actually happened in the year which has since elapsed 
has shown that those hopes were not justified, those assurances insus- 
ceptible of being fulfilled. In pursuance of the policy of submarine 
warfare against the commerce of its adversaries, thus announced and 
entered upon by the Imperial German Government in despite of the 
solemn protest of this Government, the commanders of German 
undersea vessels have attacked merchant ships with greater and 
greater activity, not only upon the high seas surrounding Great 
Britain and Ireland but wherever they could encounter them, in a 
way that has grown more and more ruthless, more and more indis- 
criminate as the months have gone by, less and less observant of 
restraints of any kind ; and have delivered their attacks without com- 
punction against vessels of every nationality and bound upon every 
sort of errand. Vessels of neutral ownership, even vessels of neutral 
ownership bound from neutral port to neutral port, have been de- 
stroyed along with vessels of belligerent ownership in constantly in- 
creasing numbers. Sometimes the merchantman attacked has been 
warned and summoned to surrender before being fired on or tor- 
pedoed; sometimes passengers or crews have been vouchsafed the 
poor security of being allowed to take to the ship's boats before she 
was sent to the bottom. But again and again no warning has been 
given, no escape even to the ship's boats allowed to those on board. 
What this Government foresaw must happen has happened. Trag- 
edy has followed tragedy on the seas in such fashion, with such 
attendant circumstances, as to make it grossly evident that warfare 
of such a sort, if warfare it be, cannot be carried on without the most 
palpable violation of the dictates alike of right and of humanity. 
Whatever the disposition and intention of the Imperial German Gov- 
ernment, it has manifestly proved impossible for it to keep such 
methods of attack upon the commerce of its enemies within the 
bounds set by either the reason or the heart of mankind. 

In February of the present year the Imperial German Govern- 
ment informed this Government and the other neutral governments 
of the world that it had reason to believe that the Government of 
Great Britain had armed all merchant vessels of British ownership 
and had given them secret orders to attack any submarine of the 
enemy they might encounter upon the seas, and that the Imperial 
German Government felt justified in the circumstances in treating 
all armed merchantmen of belligerent ownership as auxiliary vessels 
of war, which it would have the right to destroy without warning. 
The law of nations has long recognized the right of merchantmen 
to carry arms for protection and to use them to repel attack, though 
to use them, in such circumstances, at their own risk; but the Impe- 
rial German Government claimed the right to set these understand- 
ings aside in circumstances which it deemed extraordinary. Even 



the terms in which it announced its purpose thus still further to 
relax the restraints it had previously professed its willingness and 
desire to put upon the operations of its submarines carried the plain 
implication that at least vessels which were not armed would still 
be exempt from destruction without warning and that personal safety 
would be accorded their passengers and crews ; but even that limita- 
tion, if it was ever practicable to observe it, has in fact constituted 
no check at all upon the destruction of ships of every sort. 

Again and again the Imperial German Government has given 
this Government its solemn assurances that at least passenger ships 
would not be thus dealt with, and yet it has again and again per- 
mitted its undersea commanders to disregard those assurances with 
entire impunity. Great liners like the Lusitania and the Arabic 
and mere ferryboats like the Sussex have been attacked without a 
moment's warning, sometimes before they had even become aware 
that they were in the presence of an armed vessel of the enemy, 
and the lives of non-combatants, passengers and crew, have been 
sacrificed wholesale, in a manner which the Government of the 
United States cannot but regard as wanton and without the slightest 
color of justification. No limit of any kind has in fact been set to 
the indiscriminate pursuit and destruction of merchantmen of all 
kinds and nationalities within the waters, constantly extending in 
area, where these operations have been carried on; and the roll of 
Americans who have lost their lives on ships thus attacked and de- 
stroyed has grown month by month until the ominous toll has 
mounted into the hundreds. 

One of the latest and most shocking instances of this method of 
warfare was that of the destruction of the French cross-Channel 
steamer Sussex. It must stand forth, as the sinking of the steamer 
Lusitania did, as so singularly tragical and unjustifiable as to con- 
stitute a truly terrible example of the inhumanity of submarine 
warfare as the commanders of German vessels have for the past 
twelvemonth been conducting it. If this instance stood alone, some 
explanation, some disavowal by the German Government, some evi- 
dence of criminal mistake or wilful disobedience on the part of the 
commander of the vessel that fired the torpedo might be sought or 
entertained; but unhappily it does not stand alone. Recent events 
make the conclusion inevitable that it is only one instance, even 
though it be one of the most extreme and distressing instances, of 
the spirit and method of warfare which the Imperial German Gov- 
ernment has mistakenly adopted, and which from the first exposed 
that Government to the reproach of thrusting all neutral rights aside 
in pursuit of its immediate objects. 

The Government of the United States has been very patient. At 
every stage of this distressing experience of tragedy after tragedy in 



which its own citizens were involved it has sought to be restrained 
from any extreme course of action or of protest by a thoughtful con- 
sideration of the extraordinary circumstances of this unprecedented 
war, and actuated in all that it said or did by the sentiments of gen- 
uine friendship which the people of the United States have always 
entertained and continue to entertain towards the German nation. 
It has of course accepted the successive explanations and assurances 
of the Imperial German Government as given in entire sincerity and 
good faith, and has hoped, even against hope, that it would prove to 
be possible for the German Government so to order and control the 
acts of its naval commanders as to square its policy Avith the princi- 
ples of humanity as embodied in the law of nations. It has been 
willing to wait until the significance of the facts became absolutely 
unmistakable and susceptible of but one interpretation. 

That point has now unhappily been reached. The facts are sus- 
ceptible of but one interpretation. The Imperial German Govern- 
ment has been unable to put any limits or restraints upon its warfare 
against either freight or passenger ships. It has therefore become 
painfully evident that the position which this Government took at 
the very outset is inevitable, namely, that the use of submarines for 
the destruction of an enemy's commerce is of necessity, because of 
the very character of the vessels employed and the very methods of 
attack which their employment of course involves, incompatible with 
the principles of humanity, the long established and incontrovertible 
rights of neutrals, and the sacred immunities of non-combatants. 

I have deemed it my duty, therefore, to say to the Imperial German 
Government that if it is still its purpose to prosecute relentless and 
indiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by the use of 
submarines, notwithstanding the now demonstrated impossibility of 
conducting that warfare in accordance with what the Government of 
the United States must consider the sacred and indisputable rules of 
international law and the universally recognized dictates of human- 
ity, the Government of the United States is at last forced to the con- 
clusion that there is but one course it can pursue ; and that unless the 
Imperial German Government should now immediately declare and 
effect an abandonment of its present methods of warfare against 
passenger and freight carrying vessels this Government can have no 
choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the Government of the 
German Empire altogether. 

This decision I have arrived at with the keenest regret ; the possi- 
bility of the action contemplated I am sure all thoughtful Americans 
will look forward to with unaffected reluctance. But we cannot 
forget that we are in some sort and by the force of circumstances 
the responsible spokesmen of the rights of humanity, and that we 
cannot remain silent while those rights seem in process of being 



swept utterly away in the maelstrom of this terrible war. We owe 
it to a due regard for our own rights as a nation, to our sense of 
duty as a representative of the rights of neutrals the world over, 
and to a just conception of the rights of mankind to take this stand 
now with the utmost solemnity and firmness. 

I have taken it, and taken it in the confidence that it will meet 
with your approval and support. All sober-minded men must unite 
in hoping that the Imperial German Government, which has in other 
circumstances stood as the champion of all that we are now con- 
tending for in the interest of humanity, may recognize the justice 
of our demands and meet them in the spirit in which they are 
made. 

O 



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